Presenting M4F: Ep1. Meat the four futures

So what we've gotten stored for you today is not a normal feed episode. It's another podcast project that I, Matthew Kessler, co-host of Feed, have been working on for a little over a year. [Music] It's called Meet the Four Futures, and we dive into four very different visions for what the future of Meet and Livestock could look like. Efficient Meet, alternative Meet, less Meet and no Meet. Debates about the future meet are complex. They're built off of people's values and ethics and where you live in the world. One person looks at a stake on a plate or a big pot of chicken soup and sees a nutritious meal. While others see animal flesh and others see home. In this series, we grapple with some complex ethical and scientific questions, and we hear different arguments and scrutinize the evidence along the way. We're going to now play the first episode in an eight episode series. The first three episodes are out now in the Meet the Four Futures feed. It's available on tabledebates.org/meat and wherever you listen to podcasts. I really hope you subscribe, listen, and tell your friends and colleagues about the show. Here's the first episode. Are you a herbivore, an omnivore, or a carnivore? No matter what, you're in the right place. Food is a lot more than what we put on our plates. How do you choose to feed yourself or the ones you love? What inspires your decisions? Is it the taste, the cost, the ethics? Maybe it's a meal that reminds you of your childhood. What we eat and don't eat isn't only a scientific question. It's an emotional and ethical one. And it's exactly what we're going to explore in this podcast. Welcome to Meet the Four Futures, where we dive into four very different visions of what the future of Meet and Livestock could look like. We'll speak to farmers, CEOs, scientists, NGOs, and more to hear different arguments people make four or against these futures. One, a plant-based future with no meat and no farm animals. I'm all in for everything that helps getting animals out of the food chains. Ring it on! Two, efficient Meet 2.0, where we raise more livestock on fewer resources to meet the growing global demand. Can we get more pounds from each cow or chicken? Can we use less feed to produce a pound of meat? Three, a future featuring Meet alternatives, like lab-grown meat and insects. Before we continue eating, all of the meat that humanity wants, but without the need to cause so much harm to the planet and the animals. And four, a less meat future, where animals are raised in ways that mimic their natural environments. If we use raising livestock, we can make use of all the global land that we really can't grow anything else on. So know me, more meat, different meat, or less meat. I'm Matthew Kessler from Table, and I'm very excited and a little bit nervous to guide you through this series. I've worked on farms and slaughtered in eight animals, but then I became a vegetarian for many years. I've walked into grocery stores and markets and chose the cheapest option, and I've worked in restaurants and used only the best ingredients. And now, as I think about what to feed my one-year-old daughter, Meet or no meat, and if meat, how much and what kind. I'm really fortunate to have had so many conversations and hear so many different solutions to the questions, what should we eat and how should we produce our food in the future. So in this series, we will explore the what, the why, and the how. What do you eat to the four futures look like, why are people motivated to create them, how and we get there, and do their arguments hold up the scrutiny. We'll hear personal stories, dig into the scientific research, and engage with the ethical dilemmas, as we try to depolarize a very polarized conversation. What evidence would cause me to change my mind? We are part of the problem today, but we can actually be part of the solution also. We can eat better meat, but regardless, we need to eat less meat. I can't really say why should I, if I don't have to start eating meat again. Are you ready to meet the four futures? It is possible that you'll hate me by the end of the series. I hope not, truly. I hope to take you on the journey that I've been on this last year, talking to people about their vision of what a good future for meat and livestock looks like and how do we get there. Food has this incredible ability to bring people together, but it can also divide us. And how can it not? The same foods that some find so nutritious that give us such a strong sense of who we are are also believed by others to be at the center of so many existential concerns. Global malatrition, climate change, biodiversity loss, and inequality. So talking about these different futures, no meat, less meat, alternative meat, or efficient meat can equally inspire or terrify. In this podcast, people that support each vision will speak for themselves, all with different values and goals. That means one thing's for sure. You'll meet people who you disagree with along the way. It will no longer be a debatable proposition, anywhere on planet earth that our future will be entirely clean meat. I can't actually see the non-meat future. The current system industrialized animal agriculture, I think can be called many things, but I don't think natural is one of them. There's logical progression from base tenies and to veganism. If you question everything, you will automatically become a vegan. Because we know from a scientific point of view that if we improve efficiency in any system that will cut the carbon footprint. In this podcast, we will let people elaborate on these arguments, giving you nuances and perspectives that maybe you haven't thought of so much before. Maybe we'll find that there's more common ground than we expected. But first, we should establish some baselines, because this isn't an anything goes podcast. It's clear that from an environment, a health, and a social perspective, business as usual is not working, and urgent action is needed. So let's take a look at how meat is eaten and produced across the world today. Part 1. Current picture. According to science. My research aims at figuring out how we can feed the growing population without destroying our environment. Elin Rousse is an associate professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and a research director at table. So a lot of what I do in my research is to try to calculate how different foods and different diets and agricultural systems affect things like climate, biodiversity. Elin has looked at some key trends with animal agriculture around the world. Both meat consumption and production has increased massively during the last 50, 60 years. So if we look at 1961, the average global meat consumption was 23 kilos per year per person. And now that has risen to 44 kilos per person a year. And of course, in the same time population increased also. So in the last 60 years, the population is doubled, and we're eating twice as much meat as we used to. Which means we're producing and eating four times as much meat as we did in 1960. And I want to break this down a little more. Since these global averages can hide the differences of how much meat people eat across the world. So an athlete high meat consuming countries like Australia, the United States, Spain, people are consuming over 100 kilograms of meat each year. Which translates to 2 to 3 meals that include some meat each day. And then you have Bangladesh, India, Rwanda, where people are eating on average four to five kilograms of meat throughout the whole year. So people are eating different amounts of meat, and they're also eating different animals. There's been a massive rise in poultry production and consumption. So chicken has overtaken beef and pig meat globally in the last 20, 30 years. So chicken is now the most commonly consumed type of meat globally. And that doesn't look like it will slow down either. Pultrary consumption is expected to increase 8 times in India and 5 times in South America in the coming decades. And I should add here that we're talking about land animals. If we think about animals from the oceans and the seas, there are over 2500 edible species. An aquaculture, farmed fish, is the fastest growing food production sector. Demand is expected to double by 2050, so this is clearly a very important industry with lots of diversity. Unfortunately, fish is not a focus here. For now at least. One step that really blew my mind was realizing that if you add up all the biomass of all the mammals on earth, livestock make up 62% and humans 34% and only 4% of this total mammal biomass are actually wild animals. When I first heard this just shows so clearly how humans and our animals really have total dominance over the planet. So why are there 15 times more livestock than there are wild mammals? We've been trying to get this direction since the rise of human civilization. This was first driven by over hunting and then mostly by converting the habitat where wild mammals lived until land where we can grow food. Eight atlas breaks down how much land we use for agriculture. So if we look at the globe about a third is land and the rest is water. Out of this land, some of it is of course like mountains and deserts and glaciers that can't really support any life and what's left is 70% that could support life. And out of that half of the habitable land is used for agriculture. You heard that right. Half of the habitable land on the planet is used to grow food. The rest is mostly a combination of forest, shrubs and grasslands. Agriculture is really using a lot of the land that can support life. And out of that land, livestock uses approximately 75% of the agriculture land. 75% seems like a really high number. And when I'm driving around the Midwest of the United States or where I live now in Sweden, I typically see a lot of crops being grown rather than animals grazing on pastures. The 75% includes both grazing lands and land that is used to grow feed for animals. But it depends very much on the continent and the country of course. For example Norway has only a few percent of arable land that it can grow crops. And some countries of course have massive grazing lands. So if you would drive through there, you would only see grazing animals. So each country is different. Not only when it comes to what land and resources are available for certain types of agriculture, but there's other considerations. Like what are people's diets? How many people live there now and in the future? And what power does each nation have in influencing global food trade? And when you look at the global picture where three quarters of agricultural land is used for livestock, what's actually being produced? Animal-sourced foods supply approximately 17% of global calories and 33% of protein and 43% of fats. Of course these foods make vital contribution to diets globally when it comes to nutrition, but they also use a lot of land. One of the reasons we're talking about meat is because of its impact on the environment and specifically on climate change. There's an increasing awareness that animal agriculture is up there with energy generation and the transportation sector as one of the largest global emitters. The most cited study suggests that 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the livestock sector, although some estimate it to be a little higher or a little lower. Alan explains the main sources of these emissions that come from animal agriculture. There's basically four sources you can say. So first you have methane emissions from the ruminants and ruminants are animals like cattle and sheep and goat and these animals they have multiple stomachs and that makes it possible for them to break down fiber-rich material in their feed like grass and straw they can eat and extract the nutrient from these materials. So while these ruminants can take advantage of feed that humans can eat directly, methane is formed through this process. And methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas. It's much more powerful than carbon dioxide in the short term. So that's why methane emissions from ruminant is a very significant source of greenhouse gases from animal agriculture. The second source is from growing large amounts of crops to feed to the animals. To produce one kilogram of pork for example, you need to grow around six or seven kilograms of feed like wheat oats and corn to feed to the pigs. Growing of crops causes greenhouse gas emissions from the fertilizers we use, the soil and also of course from the energy used in machinery on fields and so on. And the third source. Manure from animals also cause greenhouse gas emissions. When manure is stored and spread on fields it also leaks some greenhouse gas emissions. And then lastly, livestock production is also driving deforestation. So the cutting down of forests to make room for either crop plants to grow feed or pastures for grazing animals. And deforestation causes large amounts of greenhouse gas emission and it also has very negative effects on biodiversity. So the four main sources are methane birps from ruminants, the emissions from growing feed for the animals, the manure from the livestock, and deforestation. We've been talking about some of the problems associated with livestock, but there's also benefits. Meat provides many essential nutrients including iron, zinc and beef vitamins. While these nutrients are found in other foods, some like vitamin B12 are much harder to get from plant-based sources. For many children in poor settings that don't have access to unhealthy diets, for these children an egg or a glass of milk or a piece of meat per day can be extremely important. On the other hand meat consumption is very unevenly distributed with people in rich countries like Australia, the US, and Europe eating many times more meat than people in poor countries. And when we look at this global picture, there are up to one billion livelihoods and families connected with some form of livestock production, typically on a much smaller scale. And as we'll explore in this series, livestock in particular contexts can have some really positive impacts on the environment. To wrap up, I ask Aiden Rus why she sees focusing on meat and livestock as such a pressing issue. Livestock production uses so much land and resources already, and then we have this expected increase in demand. So it's absolutely central to discuss the future meat and livestock when we think about how to feed the world in a sustainable way going forward. This is also a very sensitive subject. We like our meats and they're also strong vested interests in livestock production. There are also so many different ways to solve this problem with livestock and the solutions really depend on where you are in the world and what things you prioritize. And what are her hopes for the series? I hope the series will bring some clarity to some important questions. First, what facts can we actually trust when it comes to livestock and meat production and consumption and its consequences? What do we actually have good evidence for? And where do we need more research still? And why do people disagree on what are the best solutions going forward? And why do people come to such different conclusions? So we hope to bring some clarity to you and to Aiden Loss, professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Part 2. The origin of the four futures. Every time I was in a room, I heard a different analysis of what the livestock problem was and a different nightmare that they feared and a different solution that they were arguing for. Tara Garnett is a researcher at the University of Oxford and the director of table. Table tries to look at the big debates people are having about a desirable future for food and it really tries to look at how and why people disagree. Back in 2015, Tara Garnett wrote "Gut Feelings Impossible Tomorrow's. Where does animal farming fit?" This report is the origin of the four futures that we're exploring in this series. These scenarios were prompted by over a decade of experience speaking with researchers and professionals working on the food system and hearing their different views. And the more I got listening and talking, the more I felt that these different visions of good and bad seem to cluster into different futures and I thought it might be interesting to try and explore what those futures looked like. She used these different visions to try and imagine four different worlds and considered how each might develop politically, socially and ecologically. And I should say that with all such thought exercises there's a whole load of oversimplification involved and most people are very thoughtful and nuanced and all the rest of it. Let's have a closer look at the four futures. The one vision which you might call an efficiency scenario takes us at starting point this idea that the global population is growing. It's becoming wealthier and more urbanised and it is increasingly wanting to eat more animal products. Animal products are delicious, they are nutritious and they have negative environmental impacts. So what we need to be doing is producing more animal product with less environmental cost. So this way of thinking would mean we should be eating the kinds of animals that can turn animal feed into meat at a more efficient rate like pigs and chickens. And we need to be producing this in cleaner greener ways which we can do through breeding and feeding formulations by perhaps rearing animals in confined animal feeding operations by recycling their waste into anaerobic digesters to produce energy and indeed you know if we're getting a bit science fictionly about it by producing animals that overcome those welfare challenges by breeding them to be more docile to to feel no pain. Since we've been spending the better part of the last century optimizing livestock production for yield and building a fishing global infrastructure this is an approach that we're really good at. So isn't this the most practical way to meet the growing global demand for meat? Well a second scenario claims there's an even better way to meet this demand. This one does a little leap frog and says well let's actually just bypass the animal altogether. We can actually produce this animal protein in cleaner and greener ways using cellular agriculture and other forms of innovation. In this future we explore the role of insects as a meat alternative and novel foods like cultivated meat or cellular agriculture to free up land for nature. This future contains both the most uncertainty since it's banking on a technology that hasn't yet proven itself to scale and it also holds the greatest potential to disrupt how we eat and produce food today. The third possible future presents a completely different action. It says hey we've completely missed the point with animals. Yes we want meat, yes we want milk and these are natural foods they are good for us in their place but the whole point of rearing animals has been to use them as nutrient recyclers as animals that consume byproducts, grass, things that we can't eat directly and turn them into nutritious food for humans. What we need to do is harness that cyclicality and remember what animals are for and get back to rearing livestock on leftovers and if we do this and if we adapt our appetites to match the biophysical capacities of the land then we will have good quality nutrition in harmony with nature. Here we have what we're calling the Les Meat Future which calls for those in affluent countries to match their diets with what the land can provide without wrapping resources from future generations. Is this the best way to continue to eat meat while staying within planetary boundaries? And finally a fourth scenario is we can modify our appetites that demand is a human construct and that what we ought to be doing is leaving animals alone entirely and switching to a more plant-based future that really really focuses on optimizing human nutrition at least environmental cost and that allow for large tracts of land to be sequestering carbon through you know rewilding, reforestation and so on and so forth. This plant-based future sees little benefit from livestock. Instead land that was grazed could be turned into forests and land that previously grew feed for animals can now be used to grow food directly for human consumption. Is it shift towards more plant-based diets the best way to improve the health of humans and the environment? In the Gut Feelings Report Tariq Arnett imagines the environmental, the social, economic and political consequences of fully embracing each of these four possible futures. But near the end of each scenario she also imagines what might go wrong like mass starvation or widespread obesity and some very strong backlash that might produce the opposite of what was desired. So why does Tariq and eat section that way? I just don't feel happy with the idea of wholeheartedly embracing one thing because for a start I feel that's where fundamentalism lies and it excludes the possibility of understanding other ways of doing things and other people's points of view. So I feel that any unified vision of a future contains within the seeds of its own destruction. There are always problems you know all new solutions bring new problems I mean that's history of humanity isn't it? So I think it's realistic to highlight what those might be. You know that said I certainly am not a wholehearted endorser of any of those futures but I see myself positioned in a sort of combination of them as in I have my biases towards a few of those scenarios. So what are some of the problems? With the efficiency future you could lay charges of animal cruelty, animal commodification, propping up the status quo with all its problems of obesity and resource extraction and concentration of power in the food system. So that's one set of accusations. With the alternative proteins you could argue that it hits the target and misses the point it might take animals out of the system it might lower some of those greenhouse gas emissions but it props up food system based on the consumption of highly processed foods that it perpetuates our ongoing alienation from the natural world and that it risks further concentrating how in the hands of a small number of large companies. Tara Garnett continues her criticisms of each future with the less meat scenario where livestock is raised in ways that mimic the animal's natural environment. You could argue that it's extremely elitist because meat availability would go down, it would become luxury only affordable by the rich unless there was some radical redistribution that was going on as well. People didn't like it then it would give rise to further land use change and deforestation to up the output in order to meet that demand. And then finally with the kind of plant-based future at one level you could say well that's the old hippie project isn't it that we all love our lentils and go around sort of dancing with daisies in our hair. And that's never going to happen and that people like meat. Another risk for that scenario that I see is that this focus on healthy and sustainable diets can risk becoming quite fascistic in its focus and that it can lead into a certain kind of eco-fundamentalism which risks apart from any of the aspect of the story. Since writing this report eight years ago now Tara has two key observations about what has changed. One, the less meat or livestock on leftover scenario has entered more mainstream debates and has been flying under the flag of regenerative agriculture and second, the plant-based and the alternative meat scenario has started to merge a bit. As we'll explore in these futures there's probably a lot more overlap of motivations and visions than you might initially expect. To wrap up I asked Tara what her hopes are for the series. I really really want to hear how advocates of these different futures and variants of those futures. I want to hear what their arguments are, what the best possible versions of those futures might be, what risks they recognize there to be and how they feel that those risks can be managed. I feel that the biggest need that we have these days is to be open-minded and because that is the way to having better and more constructive communication and interaction with one another. So I'm hoping that this podcast will contribute to more open-minded discussions. That said, obviously, there is a fine line between being open-minded and never knowing what you think, but I do hope that this podcast will help. Hopefully it will be able to get people to understand what their views are and why they hold their views while also having some kind of empathetic understanding of how and why people come at things from a different perspective. Thanks to Tara Garnett, researcher at the University of Oxford and the Director of Table. We'll link to the original Gut Feelings report in the episode shown notes. So whether you've sworn-off eating animals, whether you enjoy meat every day or whether you're in the middle, this podcast is for you. We hope you join us through to the end and we want to hear from you along the way. We're going to feature, listen or comments in a later episode and we want to know what you agree and disagree with and whether your views have changed from the beginning. You can add your voice to the podcast by recording yourself in a quiet room and sending it to us by the end of May 2023 to [email protected] And there's more to meet the four futures than this podcast. We also invite you to try out a values-based quiz that we developed for people to reflect on where they enter these debates. Depending on how your own values guide your answers, you'll be plotted onto one of the four futures and the results just might surprise you. The quiz is like what Disney Princess are you, but instead for the future of meat and livestock. We've launched a newsletter where you can see videos and more bonus content. You can subscribe through the newsletter, take the quiz, read the report and find more information on the project, all on our website, tabledebates.org/me. And thank you for listening. You can subscribe, rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen and tell your friends about us so you can argue with them over your next dinner together. This is a Formus Funded Project initiated by the Future Food Platform at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and presented by Table, a collaboration between the University of Oxford, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Vaxilane University in the Netherlands. This episode was edited by me, Matthew Kessler, and Elvacroque Sparrenborg with help and support from the wider table team. Music by Blue Dad Sessions and Epidemic Sound.